Kim Dae-jung

Kim Dae-jung (6 January 1924-18 August 2009) was President of South Korea from 25 February 1998 to 25 February 2003, succeeding Kim Young-sam and preceding Roh Moo-hyun.

Biography
Kim Dae-jung was born in Hauido, Japanese Korea in 1924, and he studied at the Universities of Konguk, Korea, and Kyunghee. A newspaper editor, he was elected a member of the National Assembly in 1960 for the oppositional Democratic Party of Korea, whose spokesman he became in 1963. When this developed into the New Democratic Party in 1967, he became its leading member, narrowly losing the presidential elections of 1971. On an extended visit to the United States and Japan, he was abducted by the Korean secret service and brought back to Korea. He was arrested periodically, and in 1980 he was sentenced to death for his alleged organization of the Kwangju uprising. Owing to international protests, this was commuted to life imprisonment, and in 1982 he was allowed to leave for the USA. He returned in 1985 to become co-chairman of the Council for Promotion of Democracy, together with Kim Young-sam. He stood against the latter in the 1987 presidential elections to represent his Party of Peace and Democracy, but lost to Roh Tae-woo. He merged his party into the new Democratic Party, in which he maintained a high profile.

In 1998, he took office as President of South Korea, succeeding Kim Young-sam. He vigorously pushed economic reform, significantly altering the landscape of the South Korean economy. He made a fairer market by holding the conglomerates accountable, and he dramatically cut or dropped state subsidies to large corporations. He also initiated a policy of engagement with North Korea known as the "Sunshine Policy", moving to begin detente with its communist government. He left office in 2003 and died six years later.